If you have ever been hospitalized for a psychiatric reason, you know that it is not like you are in the hospital for a medical reason. You don’t lay in a nice bed where you can adjust your legs and head, you don’t have your own television that you can control, you don’t have call button to call the nurse, you don’t have your own phone to call someone or receive calls from.

You have a bed with a cushion that if you are lucky has a cushion on it, a blanket and a pillow. You are given a dresser in your room and a shower that you have to share with someone else who most likely has a psychiatric problem worse than you.

You have to share the phone with everyone else on the unit, with no privacy at all, you don’t have a way to talk to the nurse unless you get up and talk to her. Even if you have documented health issues that are being treated for in the hospital, you are forced to get to the nurse’s station on your own. Even then, you are forced to share your problems with no privacy.

Often, no attention is given to you from any staff because they would rather play with their phones or are made to take notes about who eats what when and who does what when. However, these same people don’t even realize when a recently diagnosed manic female enters a male room’s room even after another patient has told them it had happened in the past.

Many things that are done to protect the patients because many of them are in there because they are a threat to themselves or others. Certain rules and restrictions have to be made. However, the mistreatment by many staff members is so not right.

If you were to look at the Patient’s Bill of Right’s, you would see that almost all of them are being broken simply because someone is in a psychiatric facility. We are also viewed as less than humans who won’t complain and should not be taken seriously.

I recently wrote a blog about there being a problem of placing people with mental health issues due to availability of beds. If this is all you have to do is for the staff to not do their jobs, give patients one uncomfortable bed, have one phone on the unit and one television, then what is the problem?

This just strengthens my point about something needs to be done and money is not being spent wisely. It also says that those with mental illnesses are treated as people who are not viewed as productive people of the society who were born with a chemical imbalance in their brain.

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About Michelle Clark Bipolar Bandit

I am a strong advocate for the mentally ill and have been since I was first approached by a lawyer in a psychiatric facility as a teenager. He wanted me to help him fight how the mentally ill are mistreated. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 17 after a full blown manic episode. Before that, I suffered from debilitating depression for 4 years. My goals are to help others by sharing my story and providing tips to deal with mania and depression. I often write blogs related to advocating for people like myself.
I want to encourage, inspire, and educate those with #bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses and also include inspirational #quotes.
I founded the group Advocates for People with Mental Illnesses and the page Mental Health Advocates United and have several social media sites that are related to bipolar disorder and/or advocacy.
If you are an advocate or would like to be, I hope you join our FB group: Advocates for People with Mental Illnesses

There is a hospital near where I live where I have been quite a bit and they are wonderful.Like you said,a bed & dresser,roomate,sharing a shower,a public phone,one television,but they were always good to me.Not a lot of privacy though.Once,I was sent to a different hospital,I was treated poorly by the staff,was threatened to be thrown in a padded room just for asking a nurse why she would accuse me of staying awake on purpose,and sexually assaulted.I have been to one other place besides these and it was pretty good,but I will never go back to the one hell hole.Anybody whose has never been hospitalized might think it’s your regular stay at a hospital,but it’s much different.I often feel like a lab rat when I’m there,let’s try this,let’s try that.Embarrassing when a nurse announces each person’s name aloud to answer whether or not you’ve had a BM

I am glad you have had some good experiences and I have had some that are better than others. It is sad that you have had to endure the other ones. I hope that you never have to go back to the one that you said you would never go back to nor any like that.

Thank you!I would have to say as far as my bipolar goes,I am mostly always in a depressed state,(very calm)but I think if they ever told me I was going there again,it would be a trigger.I know a lot of people are against it,but I have had several rounds of ECT and it actually helped.I don’t know if you’ve ever discussed this subject,but I would love to hear what other’s experiences are and maybe some scientific research,pros and cons.Btw,congrats on your engagement.I wish you both many,many years of happiness together 🙂

It’s hard for the patients, yes; I remember at my last hospital, I had probably the mildest psychiatric disorder – major depressive disorder – and I was rooming with a man who was a five-time felon, known for his violent outbursts, who was very antisocial. Not wanting to be the 6th felony, I didn’t ever mention to him that he snored enough to keep me awake. Acute care facilities seem only concerned with keeping a patient from injuring him-or herself or others long enough to get them back out the door, with little attention paid to what is actually wrong. It took an eight-week stint at an expensive treatment center for me to get any measure of decent psychological treatment, and even at those treatment centers the staff has more difficulty dealing with some disorders than others. It’s a sad state of affairs.

While I haven’t stayed in a mental health ward personally my wife with schizoaffective disorder has on many occasions and I have to agree with you on this. While the wards and the rooms are very basic I think a lot comes down to the staff – the doctors and nurses.The hospital where my wife is admitted used to have a core group of nurses who were fantastic and really cared about each and every person. Over the years these people have gradually left or been laid off. Most of the nurses now come from an agency and are there for a few days or weeks and really don’t give a stuff about anyone. Worse still is that a lot of them have no specialist training for dealing with people with a mental illness.

The system, regardless of what country you are in, seems to be failing those it is there to serve.

My room was as you described but had no shower, just a toilet stall with a swinging partial door, no dresser. Also, no tray for lunch in bed as in a regular hospital room. No food allowed in the room at all. The beds were so different from a hospital bed. A thin mattress on top of a flat board. A thin pillow and a stiff blanket. I remember calls from my siblings asking how i was and telling me about walking their dogs or gardening. I remember thinking they seemed to be able to imagine my stay being like one for a medical illness. They did not come to see me so they never saw that it was any different.